The Darkness of Day

Ratings & Reviews

Ratings & Reviews

Love the layers of artistry and cinematic intent latent in all of Rosenblatt’s work, but this one is my favorite. Never has the topic of suicide been so beautifully woven in a reel founded on real human suffering and tragedy.

Moving use of stock footage and written testimony. It's impressive how Rosenblatt begins with such a personal connection to the subject matter, and then gradually expands the movie's historical horizons. And whether serendipitous or deliberate, Rosenblatt's retrieval of thrown away 16mm is a beautiful gesture: resurrecting these prints and giving them a new life as a monument to death.

Again, random footage from garbage bins put together to dwell on the topic of suicide. I appreciate the effort. It felt over-dramatised most of the time - like the excerpts from the diary. It even throws a seppuku scene into the mix, without probably even realising, not to mention explaining, how different in nature it is compared to the other "examples". Oh, well, the viewer still needs to be entertained, I suppose.

At his best when speaking of a personal matter, Rosenblatt is both disrupted and fascinated by the concept of suicide.
Impersonal facts and personal journals side-by-side to try to make sense of the most violent human choice.
And if he illustrates the facts, he also proves that the meaning of an image can be renewed, creating metaphors from teaching material.
This is at the peak of the director's film-making,

And I hope we'll meet once more, even though as scattered memories and dust. Yes, I hope some calcified cells of my wrenched body will brush up again against some calcified cells of yours. For now, pull that damn trigger, drop the ax, tighten the plastic bag, throw the solid earth against my flying body. Use the weapon of your choice 'cause I can't decide I like them all. Enough is enough and enough is nothing.

"Someone we know - a colleague, a friend, a family member - might one day throw themselves from a bridge or swallow an overdose of pills or shoot themselves in a sunny bedroom. Chances are we would receive the news and say to ourselves, 'I should have seen it coming.' But there is no question of seeing it coming. It is already here.

Been postponing watching this. It hits right where it should. Honest portrayal of suicide. Thought of sending it to a dear friend but then I remembered she's no longer here. I should have seen it coming. There's no seeing. It's here. Inspired me to dig deeper into archives of trauma.

We all connect through this film. It hits us emotionally,makes us forget the walls we build to protect our way of living,our ego. But we did not choose the way we live, we were born in one system. Stepping out of life rather stands for stepping out of society. Makes the ones who stay behind feel pretty uncomfortable, maybe even jealous. We know we'll have to change things in this life,but what courage that takes!

To me, the most effective (and gut-wrenching) part of this short film would have to be the female narration. She recounts a handful of short stories, each exploring different aspects of suicide. Together the accounts span, not only through time, but culturally as well. To me, these serve as a poignant reminder that when it comes to dealing with emotional baggage (whatever it mat contain) we're all in the same boat.

I think this time Rosenblatt gave one step further. Cinematic language -montage, mainly- conducts the film, rather than the semantics of each frame. I also think that this film grasps some key aspects of suicide, which are related to the complexity of human mind. Science can say a lot about it. Emotions, massive emotions that can be explained at some point because they have patterns, something like soft rules.